Archive for July, 2004

This is an allegedly authentic letter sent to the Dear Deirdre Advice Column in this week’s Sun newspaper.

From “Gavin” of London.

I am a sailor in the merchant navy. My parents live in South London and one of my sisters, who lives in Brixton, is married to a guy from Cardiff. My father and mother have recently been arrested for growing and selling marijuana and are currently dependent on my two sisters, who are prostitutes. I have two brothers, one who is currently serving a non-parole life sentence in Wormwood Scrubs for his part in an armed bank raid in 1994, the other currently being held in Wandsworth on remand centre on charges of sexual misconduct with a donkey. I have recently become engaged to marry a former prostitute who indeed is still a part time “working girl” in a brothel, however, her time there is limited as she has recently been infected with an STD. We intend to marry as soon as possible and are currently looking into the possibility of opening our own brothel with my fiancé utilising her knowledge of the industry working as the manager.

I am hoping my two sisters would be interested in joining our team. Although I would prefer them not to prostitute themselves, it would at least get them off the streets and hopefully the heroin. My problem is this: I love my fiancé and look forward to bringing her into the family and of course I want to be totally honest with her.

First up there’s a great animated version of Shake That Ass from gorkhouse (the kids will love this one if you don’t mind them singing it in the playground, in the supermarket…)

Then there’s a clever little site from Sveriges Radio [via Milk & Cookies] that lets you type in the lyrics to a song and it will play back those lyrics by a variety of bands. If it doesn’t recognise any of the words, you’re asked to supply the word, the song and the artist. You will be delirious to know that I’ve just added I’d and harmony so that “I’d like to teach the world to sing” can be requested. No, no, it’s okay, I’m a walking public service me.

Lastly, there’s a new band called Santo El Diablo and they need votes on XFM’s unsigned. If you have a listen to the track by Santo El Diablo called Scream Freak and like it, have a vote. Oh and the deadline is 11pm BST today so rush, rush like the wind…

I remember my father challenging me one day as a child, he took the book I was reading, skipped back several pages and asked a question, then a few more pages, another question. And I could answer them all. Of course I never confessed that if he’d asked me those same questions the next day I wouldn’t have remembered what book I’d been reading, let alone any details…

Question 1
If you had an intelligent, fast-learning 15 year old nephew who has always been interested in a graphic design/animation/web design career, would you advise him to get to know the Apple Mac as well as he knows the Windows environment?

Question 2
If that same 15 year old nephew was about to move overseas (where shipping costs are a big issue), would you advise him to take:

(a) An Apple Mac with 21″ monitor* plus Windows laptop for the rest of the family to keep up with emails, webcam etc.
or
(b) A two year old PC that he’s comfortable with and that the rest of the family can use to keep up with emails, webcam etc.

* a potential donation from another family member, his company is upgrading their Macs and until recently this machine was used in production so although it’s five? years old it’s still a good machine.